Nourished Belly Blog

My main philosophy is to teach people how to cook their own food, but I acknowledge that sometimes life can get crazy. The goal then is how do we prepare to eat for a week that we know is going to be challenging?

Model Meals reached out and asked if I was interested in trying out their meals in exchange for some media time, and I was intrigued that they used organic ingredients and had paleo options (gluten, dairy free) and I have been wanting to try some of these ready to go meals to recommend to clients. They gave me $75 gift card, which I used to order 5 meals and pay for the $10 delivery charge. If you order, the least amount of money that you can spend on a one day order is $50, $40 for food and $10 for delivery.

Here’s my review of their service:

Pros:

Easy to order, texted to let me know they were delivering, package came with ice packs.

There wasn’t too much packaging, and if I order with them again, they’ll reuse much of it.

Actually very tasty. I had meatballs, some chicken kebabs, a steak salad, some ground pork, and some potato cakes. The combinations and flavors they used blended together really well, in both their proteins and their sauces.

Reasonably priced: $8-13 per meal.

Impressed with their commitment to high quality and organic growing methods. I’m 100% behind how they source. Which is big.

Compostable packaging!

Really nice to have different flavors during the week, Model Meals does a nice job of giving a variety of meals each week.

Cons

Really small portions. One meal, for myself which is a 130 lb woman athletic woman, was much more of a snack, although good one. Their website states that meals are a 4 oz portion of meat and a generous side of veggies. The protein was fine, but I did want a larger portion of vegetables.

Because of the small portions, I think they are able to keep their prices somewhat reasonable, $8-13 for a meal. I can see that if they provided more, they would have to charge much more.

To be a full meal, there does need to be more substance and more vegetables.

One meal I had included cooked greens, which I think they used spinach. I had it two days after it arrived and the greens did not hold very well, were overcooked and a little slimy.

The sauce container was only recyclable, which in areas that do not offer city composting is actually better than compostable containers. You can read more about this issue in my blog post about biodegradable v compostable containers.

They have instructions on how to heat these by oven, which would probably mean 10 minutes of oven heating up, and another 15 minutes to actually heat. Not super reasonable, and I used the microwave. Which is not the best way to heat up food, but most likely if you are using these types of services, you are going to heat your food in the quickest way possible.

All in all, not a bad service. Again, one of my main purposes in life is to get people to SLOW down, and to not be so busy so that cooking is impossible. However, I think once in a while life can get away from you, and it really helps to rely on services that can provide high quality meals. Model Meals is a good choice, where you will probably spend around $15 per meal on average, that includes delivery costs. So, if you are going to spend that amount on eating out on low quality food, it’s worth it. Here's a link if you want to order, it will save you $25 on your first order and give me $25 for future ordering when life gets busy!